Page:RussianFolkTales Afanasev 368pgs.djvu/281

Rh Then they met a passer-by, a beggar singing psalms. His shirt weighed fifteen pud, and his hat ten pud, and his stick was ten sazhéns long. Ilyá Múromets set on him with his horse, and was going to try his mighty strength on him.

Then the passing beggar saw Ilyá Múromets and said: "Hail, Ilyá Múromets! Do you recollect? I learned my letters with you in the same school, and now you are setting your horse on me, who am only a beggar, as though I were an enemy, and you do not know that a very great misfortune has befallen the city of Kíev. The infidel knight, the mighty man, the dishonourable Ídolishche, has arrived. His head is as big as a beer cauldron, and his shoulders a sazhén broad. There is a span length between his brows, and between his ears there is a tempered dart. And he eats an ox at a time and he drinks a cask at a time. The Prince of Kíev is very aggrieved with you that you have left him in such straits."

So Ilyá Múromets changed into the beggar's dress and rode straight back to the palace of the Prince, and cried out in a knightly voice: "Hail to thee, Prince of Kíev! give me, a wandering beggar, alms."

And the Prince saw him and spoke in this wise: "Come into my palace, beggar. I will give you food and drink and will give you gold on your way."

So the beggar went into the palace and stood at the stove and looked round.

Ídolishche asked to eat, so they brought him an entire roasted ox and he ate it to the bones; then Ídolishche asked for drink, so they brought him a cauldron of beer; and twenty men had to bring it in. And he held it up to his ears and drank it all through.

Ilyá Múromets said, "My father had a gluttonous mare; it guzzled until its breath failed."

Ídolishche could not stand this affront, and said, "Hail,